The Aussie Year End Math Trade 2012 is now open. You do not have to be attending CanCon 2013 to take part in the trade, but it may help to reduce postage if you can find a games mule to take them for you and your target is attending.

Trade prices updated. People should totally jump in and take some of these off my hands, saving lots on shipping! My goal is to get a bunch of stuff played over the next couple of months and be able to add more unusual items to the trade.

The Aussie Year End Math Trade 2012 is now open. You do not have to be attending CanCon 2013 to take part in the trade, but it may help to reduce postage if you can find a games mule to take them for you and your target is attending.

The short version is that it can be hard to find direct trades (I give you a game you want and you give me one I want in exchange), so the maths trade is a way to arrange three-way or four-way or n-way trades -- I give you a game, you give Bob a game, Bob gives me a game.

Basically, all the games go in a big pool, we all submit lists that say, "in exchange for my copy of Village I would accept X, Y or Z" and the software works out how to arrange the maximum number of trades. It's also possible to set cash prices and make cash offers.

You can never receive a game you don't specifically ask for, so it's pretty much zero-risk and everyone wins.

The trade is run to coincide with Cancon to save on shipping. A lot of the games will be exchanged there because there are so many interstate visitors. (That is not a requirement for participation, though!)

Please can we discuss deletion of items here, rather than on the list as we've been doing? MooseHead said it well, so let me reiterate it badly. If you use mr_lunch's web tool to build your list, you don't actually need to write down numbers. The way it worked for me last time, whenever I decided I would accept a game from the list I'd mark it as "want in trade". Then when I went to visit mr_lunch, it would tell me which items from the list I wanted. Inevitably there were some which I'd marked as "want in trade" which I didn't really want any more, so I unmarked them. Rinse and repeat until mr_lunch starts making sense, and then cut and paste the list.

I noticed that since mr_lunch and thepackrat have been producing these tools, my job of fixing all the errors has been much easier. Last trade there was a bit of a cock-up as some codes were changed after they were added, and the people who'd used the wrong ones felt no particular compulsion to go back and fix it. So let's not do that this time. Other than that the main errors were people using completely fictional codes which just can't happen if you use the tools.

On another note, last trade I was waiting to publish the results because I hadn't received a want list from one user. Not any of the Neils. I sent the user a couple of geekmails, but I have NEVER heard back. This time, after the deadline for submitting want lists has passed, I'll run the trade and post the results when I'm sick of waiting for people to get back to me, which will be sooner than last time. Almost of all us play super-fair, and we're all very compassionate, but the deadlines need to be respected. At the very least, if you're going to miss a deadline, let the relevant person (me, mr_lunch or Amiguero) know in advance.

Plus, unless there's a pressing reason, let's keep the rules the same to avoid confusion.

Actually, I wanted to clarify what deadlines are. If the rules say:

* users will do X by A * administrators will then do Y by B

what happens in the time between A and B? Well, last time I acted as if the deadline for doing X was B, because that was possible. However now I'm saying that some time between A and B you'd better have done X because I'll do Y and then it will be too late. If the difference between A and B is 2 days, and what I need to do takes 5 minutes, the rules do not require me to wait.

Also we should definitely change the geeklist sorting so you lose your exclusive page 2... but that's just malice on my part.

Please can we discuss deletion of items here, rather than on the list as we've been doing? MooseHead said it well, so let me reiterate it badly. If you use mr_lunch's web tool to build your list, you don't actually need to write down numbers. The way it worked for me last time, whenever I decided I would accept a game from the list I'd mark it as "want in trade". Then when I went to visit mr_lunch, it would tell me which items from the list I wanted. Inevitably there were some which I'd marked as "want in trade" which I didn't really want any more, so I unmarked them. Rinse and repeat until mr_lunch starts making sense, and then cut and paste the list.

I noticed that since mr_lunch and thepackrat have been producing these tools, my job of fixing all the errors has been much easier. Last trade there was a bit of a cock-up as some codes were changed after they were added, and the people who'd used the wrong ones felt no particular compulsion to go back and fix it. So let's not do that this time. Other than that the main errors were people using completely fictional codes which just can't happen if you use the tools.

On another note, last trade I was waiting to publish the results because I hadn't received a want list from one user. Not any of the Neils. I sent the user a couple of geekmails, but I have NEVER heard back. This time, after the deadline for submitting want lists has passed, I'll run the trade and post the results when I'm sick of waiting for people to get back to me, which will be sooner than last time. Almost of all us play super-fair, and we're all very compassionate, but the deadlines need to be respected. At the very least, if you're going to miss a deadline, let the relevant person (me, mr_lunch or Amiguero) know in advance.

I'm fine to amend the header to indicate no deletion of the items. I guess having a clean list would be nice, but we are not yet ready for that.

I strongly agree with your comments about the deadlines. This time we have plenty of time, so don't ask for extra time.

Just to chime in quickly, we're looking at doing away with the pretty codes this time around. Every geeklist item has its own unique ID anyway. You can see this number by clicking on the item's number or its "Posted" date and looking at the URL. If you don't want to have to type them in or write them down, go to

...and just click the Save CSV option. The geeklist is not currently cached and updated automatically. I'll sort a cron when I have squished some bugs.

Although we probably won't need the spiffy +altname+ thing mentioned above, there's a good chance the code I tested last time for versions might make it in. Not required, but if you add+version+ 12345 -version-...where 12345 is the version ID (again, check the URL), we can try to recognise it and link it.

Just to chime in quickly, we're looking at doing away with the pretty codes this time around. Every geeklist item has its own unique ID anyway. You can see this number by clicking on the item's number or its "Posted" date and looking at the URL. If you don't want to have to type them in or write them down, go to

Please don't do this. It will make it impossible to eyeball a wantlist and figure out what's happening and additionally make it impossible to have a second chance to fix errors because of the redundant information.

Well, we're looking to make this more streamlined and accurate. Would people be happy with getting the codes from the Trade Tool instead of them being entered on the geeklist? There were something like 690 entries last time. Even with the automation coded in at the time, it was a bit tedious.

Well, we're looking to make this more streamlined and accurate. Would people be happy with getting the codes from the Trade Tool instead of them being entered on the geeklist? There were something like 690 entries last time. Even with the automation coded in at the time, it was a bit tedious.

It would be really _really_ nice if people didn't have to switch between pages when they were looking for the codes. Particularly when there are N runebounds, but only one comes with a mint crocodile pool party as a sweetener.

I would foresee that sort of switching would lead to some really bad mistakes and general bitterness.

Well, we're looking to make this more streamlined and accurate. Would people be happy with getting the codes from the Trade Tool instead of them being entered on the geeklist? There were something like 690 entries last time. Even with the automation coded in at the time, it was a bit tedious.

Want the codes posted and thought you suggested last time you could get your tools to do that, which is why I suggested no manual setting of pages and pages of codes so as to overcome the changing and erroneous codes we had last time.

When accessing the list only view in mr_lunch's tool I'm only seeing 173 items. What gives?

This:

mr_lunch wrote:

The geeklist is not currently cached and updated automatically. I'll sort a cron when I have squished some bugs.

Working on some new features whenever I have spare time (which isn't often at the moment). I would suggest to folks that they avoid using the Trade Tool to add and save items at the moment... just in case. The format can and probably will change.

Some handy pointers The easiest way to see multiples of the same item is to click/touch the column headers to sort by name. If you spot a game in the list that you want, thumb the item. Thumbs will show in the Trade Tools (when the cache has been manually updated -- see above) If you don't want to telegraph your intentions to all and sundry, then add the game to your want-in-trade or wishlists here on BGG. These are also sortable columns in the Trade Tools. If you prefer to do things in a more manual manner, then there's a Save CSV button at the top left of the table. This will give you a comma separated values file that you can open in OpenOffice Calc, or some lesser spreadsheet

I will be posting the codes to the geeklist, but the above methods will be much less prone to errors than writing things down. I'm sure you can all copy and paste at the very least! The codes will likely have longer numbers than the last trade as well as the 5 character descriptive letters. This will allow folks to look up the exact item should they choose to, as well as have a hint as to what it was with the acronym-ish-thingy.